I think the people behind The Warriors envisioned the film as a rousing tale of the youth gone wild, the city overtaken by the young and the restless. It may be due to my extreme lack of cool but I have trouble identifying a single character I liked. They fell into two categories: flat or terrible, the majority residing in the rotten space in-between (here’s looking at you, Mr. “I Like It Rough”). Swan lacked the charisma necessary to be a leader, let alone one fit for a time of crisis. Mercy was a deeply uncomfortable character, anti-feminist to her core. While on the run, fully aware of the danger, she literally begs Swan to take her in the subway tunnels. I refuse to accept a portrait of a woman so controlled by hysterical sexuality and wish to see it sent back to the Victorian era where it belongs. Her Knight in Pleather Vest treats her like garbage, calling her a whore and telling her he disapproves of her lifestyle. By the film’s end, though, apparently having bonded over his monosyllabic responses to her petulant whines and some subway-floor flowers, the audience is asked to accept these characters as being on the brink of some kind of grand romance. No, no, nope; please return to sender.

Also, the film spends no time establishing why the civic order deserves to be thrown over. The cops function predominantly as props, thrown about on subway platforms: (unconvincing) violence for violence’s sake. I was grateful for their intercession, as I could only ask how the Woman Alone in Central Park would have fared without them. Further, as Roger Ebert wrote in his review, for a movie so supposedly devoted to the nitty-gritty, it is strangely devoid of spontaneous emotion. You would think a film that claims to illustrate the lives of rebellious youth would strive to be more organic, less obviously contrived.